A couple of poems from a while back

Henry

Henry looks tired now. His corrugated trunk is racked with little stretch marks; melancholic eyes flecked with dust. He manoeuvres the contours of my room sluggishly, choking on perspex shavings and polystyrene balls, his industrious whirring reduced to a mere wheeze of asthmatomia. He used to represent such solidarity. Now look at him. He can't even return to his corner, without getting tangled in bulky entrails. He gets embarrassed when I turn his lever, snaps he can do it himself. The other night I caught him up late, in the middle of the living room floor. He was staring glass-eyed up at the television, every few seconds flicking between channel 19 and channel 80: dramatic reconstruction of the Battle of Berlin, then a mass of cowboy hats and I-phones at ground zero, held aloft in joint Twitter-feed euphoria. I saw Obama four more years! placards, moving in the prism of his plastic tears. I didn't bother telling him he'd missed the point entirely. I realise I'm starting to move things out of the way with him in mind: I no longer trust him with filter strips, worn headphone wires or Chinese takeaway detritus. I tried to hide my anger when he took on the challenge of a four week old ashtray from the conservatory, but the old are more perceptive than they appear. He seemed to know what I was thinking, and was gloomy, humiliated, as I emptied his stinking bag, filling the room with ash.

How long can I do this?

 

Whiter-Than-White

The boy's face is whiter than white. His

hair –naturally– is black. I see him

coming towards me in the blanket rain;

too tall to hunch, but trying anyway.

He seems to walk in slow motion, like a

self-conscious giraffe. Clumpy shoes and a

flailing scrap of tie, the gangling gait of

puberty in his limbs. I feel for him.

Ten feet from me he turns, raises a thin

wrist up to a terrace window; waves.

I follow his gaze, to a curtained face,

smiling red-eyed with maternal pride.

I read the words in her smile: Good Luck!

Oh, Fuck! Has he been standing by the

playground wall? Wotsits scattered from his

grasping hands by the missile of a hoofed football?

I want to reach out, shake him there and then;

tell him that it's them who'll suffer when,

he's not there to fill the rotten hole

at the centre of their cowardice.

The curtain closes and he turns, smack:

We collide. It seemed like I was dreaming, but now I'm

in the picture we were both observing. Impact

sends Tupperwared coleslaw he was holding–

falling. I offer a smile but see the

startled accusation in his eyes. He

legs it through the blanket rain, leaving me there

in the shining street, with whiter-than-white

mayonnaise, splattered on my feet.